Digital Driving Traditional

Traditional In a throw away, plastic-moulded age, Heather Harris still finds workshops across the county using traditional tools alongside very modern ones to meet a demand for lifetime quality.

- Heather Harris

HER look was quizzical. Was it the vocabulary she didn’t understand? Was I turning the pages too fast? Perhaps the book was too hard for a three-year-old? Reading to my niece from my favourite, somewhat dog-eared Fairy Tale book is one of the many joys of babysitting. After all, my own children are all now too old and cynical and only read when a digital device is out of charge. But 15 years earlier they had been transfixed by Rumpelstiltskin and adored The Elves and The Shoemaker. So, what had changed? Following little Molly’s pointing figure, I could see she had absolutely no idea what the ‘daughter spinning straw into gold’ was actually doing or why the little men in pointy hats were bashing pins into the backs of shoes.

In less than two decades these traditional crafts had become mysteries. Molly’s generation are born less with a silver spoon in their mouths, more an iPhone in their hands, and to them an apple is a device not a poisoned fruit eaten by Snow White.

As a recent comprehensive study by the Craft Councils of the UK stated, ‘If technologies such as 3D printing become ubiquitous, and it becomes possible to make distinctive objects at the touch of a button, what does that imply for the whole notion of craft?’

Will traditional skills disappear one mega-byte at a time or, like farmers’ markets, will they have a resurgence as a backlash against all things mass produced.

Opinion is divided. Pat Reynolds, coordinator at the Heritage Crafts Association, believes that ‘centuries old crafts will die out unless younger people make a concerted effort to learn them. These skills will only survive if they live in each generation. They provide a link to our roots, and they are part of our shared heritage.’